Which game offers the least variance for a skilled pro?

[lunchmeat]

I often hear people talking about what game gives the greatest advantage to a skilled player, but I'm curious as to what poker game people think has the least variance for skilled players.

I would guess limit hold 'em has comparatively low variance.

Tournaments, Omaha High, no-limit, and short-handed poker seem to have a lot.

[Warren Whitmore]

correct

[J.A.Sucker]

The lowest variance is in NL/PL games for good players. Today, limit hold em actually has a relatively high variance, since people play their draws hard and put a lot of money in preflop. This didn't apparently used to be the case.

[The Gift Of Gab]

I have no numbers to back this up but I think PLO8 would have on of the highest coefficients of variation (C.V.) - win rate/standard deviation - of the big bet games. It's pretty hard to find live, though.

[Rolf Slotboom]

Actually, for a good player, in PLO / 8 the variance is rather low as well. A good player will usually be playing for his entire stack only when he has an excellent low (draw) and some high potential as well, meaning he has to get VERY unlucky to lose his entire stack. (Because of this, big losses for good players are a rare occurrence.) Actually, the fact that it is very hard for the weaker players to book a large win (or even win regularly) might be one of the reasons this game isn't offered very frequently. (Ray Zee has written some things on this game in his hi-lo book.)

In general, I would argue that money games with low variance have a tendency to die out, and thus are very hard to find, because the weaker players simply don't stand a chance. Games like five-card stud and pot- or no-limit hold'em with deep money come to mind.

Rolf
www.acespeaks.cjb.net (http://www.acespeaks.cjb.net)

[Iceman]

"I often hear people talking about what game gives the greatest advantage to a skilled player, but I'm curious as to what poker game people think has the least variance for skilled players.

I would guess limit hold 'em has comparatively low variance.

Tournaments, Omaha High, no-limit, and short-handed poker seem to have a lot."

Multi-table tournaments are high variance, but no-limit holdem SNGs are low variance.

Among PL games, holdem and Omaha-8 are usually lower variance, while Omaha High is high variance. Holdem can be high variance if there are very aggressive players in the game, while Omaha-8 can be high variance if there's a lot of preflop raising.

If we're strictly talking about limit games, the variance from lowest to highest generally goes: stud-8, Omaha-8, stud, holdem, Omaha high. Variance in Omaha-8 will be much higher in a game with lots of preflop raising though, and holdem variance depends a lot more on game conditions while stud variance depends more on the ante structure. Very good holdem players tend to have lower variance than mediocre ones, since better hand reading allows them to fold properly in several unprofitable cases. By contrast, an expert stud player will often be pushing second-best hands and playing aggressively to narrow the field, and will usually have a higher variance than a mediocre stud player.

[James282]

Good post Iceman! I agree with basically everything you said /images/graemlins/smile.gif
-James

[ZeeJustin]

[ QUOTE ]
...and short-handed poker seem to have a lot.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was thinking about this last night and confused myself. It is certainly true, that after 1 orbit, your standard deviation will be much higher shorthanded when compared to a full table.

Let's create a hypothetical player and call him Bob. Bob has great game selection, and only sits at a table if he's the best player. In a 3 handed game, Bob is more likely to be up after let's say 50 hands, than he would be likely to be up after the same 50 hands in a 10 handed game. My gut tells me this holds true no matter what the number of hands is (from 1 to any finite number).

Wouldn't this imply that there's less variance shorthanded?

I'm guessing I'm just a little fuzzy on my definition of variance.

Someone de-confuse me please!

[zooey]

gotta make sure you're comparing variamces relative to the earn. So for your example, if bob wants to make $30/hour, maybe his choices are to play at a full 15-30 table (SD ~$300/hr) or a short 5/10 table (SD $200/hour)

The SD short handed is greater in BB per hour but less in overall $.

A standard measure is the coefficient of Variance: SD/EV.
The lower the CV, the better the game is)

My results: (Game / CV)
NL SnGs 9
Lim SnGs 12
NL Ring 15
Lim Ring 18

So for me, _relative to earn_ limit games have the MOST variance.

Best,

Zooey

[bigpooch]

I am somewhat surprised that nobody has yet mentioned a game
that I believe easily has one of the smallest ratios of the
SD/(hourly rate) for the skilled player. That game is high
only draw, the form of poker most people first start out
playing. Keeping statistics for a few weeks of online play,
this ratio per hour was under 8.0 whereas for a LHE ring
game, the ratio was just under 18.0 for online play. The
draw game online is but only five-handed and I have yet kept
statistics on 5-handed LHE but from experience, the swings
are much bigger in 5- and 6-handed LHE as compared to ring
games. High only draw is one of the games where a highly
skilled player will undergo very small swings relative to
his win rate: so small that for the Paradise draw games, a
bankroll with only a 1% ruin chance is only about 120 big
bets. It's so small, that putting in 8 hour shifts at the
game (albeit playing three tables), even if a highly skilled
player were to play every day in a month, he would expect to
have only one losing day.

But as Rolf Slotboom has said, often those games slowly die
out. A terrible idea for a game is NL O8, which appeared
for but a brief time on Paradise poker and that is a game
where the fish get killed quite quickly. Also, 7Stud split
with no qualifier also comes to mind as a game where the
fish stand almost no chance. Any other games anyone else
can think of?

[Mackas]

I play NLHE and PLO cash games and NLHE tourneys and SNGs. It was always obvious PLO had the highest variance of these. I always felt that NLHE cash games had a low variance and since I started using PokerTracker that's been borne out (barring one major tilt session we'll not go into right now <shudder>). What surprised me having collated about two months of regular play (roughly 3 hours a day on average) was the very little variance within SNGs. In fact I was even able to identify from my own point of view which buy ins suited best and number of players (18 or 9). Since then I've tried to stick exclusively to the best combinations of buy in / players and found that variance levelled out even more and indeed am turning the best profit I have ever done at SNGs since then.

The point is even within one type of game (in this case HE) you might find particular game conditions (limits, betting stuctures, SNGs, tourneys, shorthanded or full etc) that minimise your variance further and or increase your profits. If HE in any form is your game I would heartily recommend poker tracker and after a few weeks or months (depending on how much you play) you should be able to start identifying these trends in black and white for yourself. Its a simple step then to try and maximise your own play by concentrating on your strengths.

PS Why do I have this sudden feeling of dread that having said all of the above I'm about to launch on one of the biggest downturns in my brief poker career with massive swings and an abject failure to cash in the next 50 SNGs I play? /images/graemlins/crazy.gif

[Mackas]

BTW I am in no way a "skilled pro" as anyone who has played with me will testify /images/graemlins/tongue.gif and am not putting myself forward as such but I am someone who has been consistently working on my game and in particular trying to identify my own strengths including profit and swings etc across the games I do play.

[mr_jmac]

Hey,

My experience is this:

1) Hold'em has less variance than stud ... good discussion of why in THFAP

2) Split pot games have less variance than high only games ... especially against loose bad players. I play O8 and 7CS-8 against very bad competition and the variance is much lower compared to playing hold'em against the same line-up.

3) Tournaments have high variance for obvious reasons. However, NL/PL SNG's (online) or cash one-table satellites have very low variance and are in my opinion the best choice of all games if variance is your primary concern

Later,
JM

[Lunamondo]

I have run some shorthanded simulations and they indicated that average shorthanded games will fluctuate more often than not at one small bet above and below expectation (whatever one wins between one and two big bets per 60 hands or one online hour) during 10,000-100,000 hands, while it's guaranteed at 100,000 hands; before that it's some smaller piece of the times/cases one big bet above or below expectation.

If one wins just one small bet per 60 hands or one online hour, it's too risky to most, while if one wins more than one big bet per 60 hands or one online hour one is guaranteed to make a profit after 10,000 hands at average shorthanded limit holdem games, and so is risk free if one is happy to the results under above fluctuation.